Machine Type Communications (MTC) is used for automatic transmission or measurement of data from remote sources, for instance by wireless communication. A machine to machine solution includes three elements: the MTC devices, the wireless or wired carrier network (for instance a 3GPP based system), and the MTC servers.
MTC devices interconnected via wireless networks can be used to improve efficiency in various areas, such as to provide the ability for improving maintenance services. Other areas where MTC can be used are in monitor systems, such as automatic meter reading, in surveillance cameras, in vehicle fleet management and so on.
Network Improvement for Machine Type Communication, NIMTC, has been a study item in 3GPP Release 10. The study has primarily focused on architectural enhancements to the existing system to support a large number of Machine-Type Communication (MTC) devices in the network and architectural enhancements to fulfill MTC service requirements.
The study has been divided into a number of different key issues that each focus on a particular optimization. For 3GPP Release 10 some of the studied key issues have already been included into the standard. The work continues in 3GPP Release 11. This invention may be a potential solution proposal for future 3GPP releases; however it could also be used as a proprietary feature.
There are many possible use cases for machine type communications. Different scenarios and applications have their own requirements and traffic characteristics. Some applications may be tolerant to delay and only occasionally transmit very little data (e.g. meters) while other applications may require a constant (guaranteed) bit rate with real time characteristics (e.g. surveillance cameras). In addition some MTC devices can be assumed to be geographically fixed (meters) while others are mobile (fleet management).
To have a very large number of simultaneously connected devices over a 3GPP network presents a scalability problem for the GW (e.g. GGSN or PDN GW). Each so called PDN-connection will require a number of parameters to be stored in a volatile memory of the GW. The number of Simultaneously Attached Users (SAU) in a GW is thus limited by the available memory resources.